Paul from Paris

The most frequently e-mailed story in The New York Times today is a short piece that describes how college students today expect a good grade as a matter of course.

As the article describes, students today do not hesitate to negotiate a better grade and seem to expect a good grade (of at least "B") simply for attendance and completing assigned reading.

This behavior is seen as a change, and several causes are suggested: parental pressure, achievement anxiety, expectations forged in pre-collegiate education.

The article struck a responsive chord with me, because I've encountered this sense of entitlement when teaching in France. Here are my observations and hypotheses:

• From having run a European study-abroad program for a diverse group of international students, I can attest that grade negotiation is widespread; it's not limited to American students, or even to native English speakers. It also affects Brazilians, Slovenes, Poles, Indians, and Australians.
• Among French students –with the caveat that I've encountered mostly the "cream of the crop" among advanced students at highly selective schools– I've found a bizarre disconnect between the lived, collective classroom experience and individual expectations of exam performance.
• There's a disconnect because some students seem to think that the exam will be dissociated from classroom experience; in other words, doing the readings or participating to class are not necessarily thought of as the foundations of a good exam grade.
• There's also a disconnect because every student, individually, seems quick to self-evaluate as  better than average.
• My explanation: democratization, understood as a trend towards more egalitarian societies. It's great that people talk less about class (or class struggle) and view skeptically all sorts of hereditary claims. In this environment, students see themselves as equal vis-a-vis the professor, so grade negotiation makes sense.
• I find that students want good grades for themselves, but don't want poorer grades for everyone else. I'll hear student A say, "my friends X, Y, and Z all got a good grade, and I think I should get the same grade." I don't hear student A say, "I worked harder than my friends X, Y, and Z, so you must have made a mistake; I deserve a better grade than theirs."
• From what I've seen, schools are also made uncomfortable by grading issues. Partly this reflects a tension between selective admissions (designed to group the best students) and bell curve expectations when grades are given. If the school selects from the top quartile, why shouldn't its students receive only grades of A or B? This is a legitimate argument, or at least topic for discussion. Partly, too, it reflects an acceptance that students will contest below-average grades (maybe even grades that are simply average), putting demands on administrative time and effort to arbitrate disputes. I do wish schools better communicated with faculty about the desired shape of a grade curve, its midpoint and shape. I also wish schools communicated more clearly with students (and their families) about grading policies.

Tom Friedman wrote a bestseller, The World Is Flat. Friedman's subject was globalization, and his metaphor was slightly off: he really meant that the world today is small. Flatness, I would argue, more aptly describes student expectations with respect to grading. The world today is flat because younger people view the world with democratic, egalitarian eyes.

The much-read, often-e-mailed New York Times article show cased research published recently in a scholarly journal, The Journal of Youth and Adolescence. I've already vented about these "teaser" articles that spark curiosity about scholarly research that turns out to be extremely hard to access outside a university research library. Taking a cue from mainstream media, I wish academic publishers would make a selection of articles available to the general public, at no charge (or with a super-simple payment system).

While studying in Perugia (in Umbria, Italy), British student Meredith Kercher was murdered. The immensely sad news was followed in 2007 by a series of colorful reports about the circumstances of her death and the constellation of suspects involved.

An American student, Amanda Knox, and her Italian friend Raffaele Sollecito, are now on trial in Italy for sexual assault and murder; another suspect, Rudy Guede, was convicted in fast-track proceedings after fleeing to Germany. (A fourth suspect, Diya "Patrick" Lumumba, a bar owner born in the Congo, was exonerated after having been accused by Knox.)

The whole affair is immensely sad, and I do hope the courts in Italy are able determine responsibility and punish the wrongdoers. From my work with exchange students and higher education programs in Europe, I'll offer some guidelines –some of which are controversial– for universities, programs, students, and their families:

• Study abroad is not a package tour. All parties concerned should be consistent on this point. There's an expectation –probably implicit, possibly not legally enforceable– that participants on a package tour will travel safely, without serious incident; if something does go wrong on a package tour, someone will step in and act to make the situation right. This is not what study abroad programs offer.
• Study abroad is not a vacation. Traveling to other places and mingling with new faces is enriching. But not sufficient to constitute a study abroad program. There's a temptation to market study abroad to parents as a great travel opportunity, and to students as a good time-out. This is misguided. More than enrollment in a foreign school is needed to make the program something other than a vacation. Ideally, students should put together a program themselves and present to their home school what they hope to accomplish abroad. Schools should invest resources in oversight ("supervision" sounds too disciplinary to students' ears but captures the spirit of what I'm aiming for) to: check that students are participating (going to class); help navigate administrative or daily living obstacles (especially housing); and assist in realizing a study abroad project or plan.
• Study abroad is not shopping. Most students are on a tight budget, and study abroad imposes costs (travel costs, living costs). For many students and their families, money is tight. And in keeping with the point that study abroad is not a vacation, some schools should give thought to broadening the pool of students who can take advantage of study abroad programs. For other students –probably a minority and probably variable by home school– money isn't a problem. Except that sometimes, it is: having ample funds is a bad idea when coupled with an undemanding academic load, basically no athletic or social commitments, and lots of free time. The problem is less a generous budget than how funds are spent.
• Study abroad is not a pub crawl. Binge drinking is an issue on both sides of the Atlantic. Mostly I see hand-wringing but little action taken to deal with the problem. (By "dealing with", I don't mean enforcing or encouraging prohibition, but thinking creatively about managing consequences and containing costs.) I see huge tensions between individual autonomy –in everyone's mind when the student goes out drinking– and institutional responsibility (whenever something goes wrong or a student needs assistance, the institutions to which the student belong quickly get involved).
• Study abroad is not a sex tour. I'm taking a polemical stance on this point. Some students will take advantage of the opportunities presented by permissive, open-minded communities in Europe. They already have done the math and have figured out the possibilities. Study abroad need not and should not be spun or marketed from a sexual angle. I'm concerned mostly about managing prurient thoughts by school administrators about what students are up to. I see tensions on this point too between individual autonomy and institutional responsibility. Some of this flows from binge drinking or drug use. But I also see schools called in to referee or to resolve what seem like everyday domestic disturbances (live-in boyfriend won't pay rent, ex-girlfriend took possession of a portable computer).

For a negotiation, I went to the offices of a respected law firm in an upscale Paris neighborhood. (The negotiation went well, thank you.) At the end of a productive morning, before heading out into icy Paris streets, I asked if I might use the bathroom, to which I was cheerfully escorted. After heeding the call of nature, my eyes lit on a paper –not a poster, but a sheet of office paper– affixed on the bathroom's inside door. The paper said, in essence but in folksier terms, "Think of those who will be next. Please leave this place as clean as it was when you came here," and featured a clipart sketch of a gleaming toilet.

I mean the point in a joking way, but the firm's reputation took a dive after I saw that.

This is a firm where the managing partner can take time –his own and his secretary's– to produce a notice. But the managing partner lacks the courage to put these words into a memo, to be circulated throughout the office. And he lacks the authority to say, at an office meeting, "We owe it, to ourselves and to our clients, to keep the office bathrooms spotless, and I ask you all to take special care to live up to this expectation."

There's an alternative explanation (still put forward in a joking way): the firm is cheap or indecisive when it comes to housekeeping. Perhaps more than weekly/biweekly/daily janitorial service is needed. There's a tradition in French cafés and train stations, of a bathroom staffed by a Dame Pipi, whose job is to maintain the premises in pristine condition, and who assesses a few coins from each user.

A reader obliquely suggested another way out of this predicament: give a nudge. This is the title of Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein's book, which discusses ways to draw attention and influence behavior in a positive way, but without dictating anything. There was an interesting experiment carried out in the men's room at the Schipol airport in Amsterdam: flies were painted onto the urinals. The surprising effect: "spillage" onto the floor fell by 80%. Thaler surmises, "Men evidently like to aim at targets."

Friends and colleagues who know that I’m a proud user of the Paris Velib bike rental system have been peppering me with questions since the New York Times and French papers including Le Parisien ran stories on cycle vandalism. It suffices to point out that the articles managed to convey a grim view of the state of the Velib system.

I’m a skeptic, and I think the story is slightly different from the one reported. Here’s my take:

1. Cycle theft is a concern. By theft, we understand cyclists who borrow but never return bikes. Thankfully, cycles are no hijacked while in motion, and they are solidly locked while at rest. Cycles are rented after the cyclist provides credit card details and accepts to be charged € 150 in case of loss. Compared to the cost of a new bike, € 150 may be an acceptable price to pay: some renters may keep a bike by pure calculation. A few schemers may even have designs to take a bike for free, by using data of a credit card that will expire or become depleted (prepaid cards are stating to be used as gifts). This having been said, reported disappearances of 100 cycles per week seem far fetched, and I can’t help but wonder whether most cycles that go missing eventually are recovered.
2. Most vandalism is abuse. I’m inclined to view as anecdotal the more spectacular cases of extreme cycling (as in this video, which I suspect is tinged by parody). I suspect most abuse occurs at night and is done by young people, probably drunk. Of the 20 000 cycles in circulation, 11 600 reportedly have been vandalized (over 18 months), and the operator has filed 3 257 complaints with the police (that include thefts). From what I’ve seen, this latter figure seems to capture the frequency of vandalism. This works out to an average 180 incidents per month, or about 1% of the bike fleet.
3. Much of the problem actually stems, from what I’ve seen and experienced, from insufficient repairs and maintenance. There simply aren’t enough people spending enough time keeping the fleet in good working order. Economics dictate this outcome. Velib operator JC Decaux runs the system in exchange for the right to display outdoor advertising. Having incurred up-front costs to install the cycles, I expect the operator will be inclined to limit its expenditures on maintenance. The present climate, unfriendly for selling space to advertisers, reasonably pushes the operator to complain of high repair costs, maybe even to recast ordinary maintenance as extraordinary abuse. Velib cyclists ultimately bear the costs.

I’m eager to put together a business school case study that would look into a rental cycle’s useful life,  the extent of wear and tear that might be considered normal, and good, cost-effective processes to deliver maintenance service.

An earlier post on Shepard Fairey, creator of an iconic image promoting Barack Obama, noted efforts by The Associated Press to allege and settle a copyright infringement claim. The AP had alleged that Fairey infringed AP copyright in a photograph by Mannie Garcia.

Fairey and his legal team apparently have decided to settle the matter before a court rather than in the press or by private meeting. Fairey and his company, Obey Giant Art, Inc., filed suit against The Associated Press before the federal district court for the Southern District of New York.

Fairey's complaint asks the court for a declaratory judgment that Fairey's work does not infringe any copyright held by the AP and are protected by the fair use doctrine (a defense in US copyright law to a claim of infringement). Specifically, Fairey argues In his complaint that he:

I don't usually comment on pending litigation, but as in my earlier post have to wonder: what was the AP thinking, and what was it hoping to accomplish?